In financial companies and organizations, a currency sorter is generally used to facilitate organizing and handling deposited currency notes. When a bunch of currency notes of normal and unfit conditions and of various face amounts together are deposited (normal notes are referred to as “fit notes” hereinafter while “unfit notes” means those which are significantly fatigue due to grime and breakage), such a currency sorter serves to sort the currency notes according to their respective denominations and fit/unfit conditions and then bundle typically a hundred of the notes, for example, with a tape.
A prior art sorter of the similar type can handle at most the currency notes of only three face values of 1,000 yen, 5,000 yen, and 10,000 yen, for instance, and the typical sorter is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 2597752 (Patent Document 1).
The Patent Document 1 describes a sorter that includes the external stacking units for the currency notes of the above-identified face values and two built-in stacking units for bundling.
The external stacking units have a fixed relation with denominations, and are simply allocated to the currency notes of the individual denominations. This means that it is impossible to sort out varied categories such as fit and unfit conditions, new and old versions, and the like to stack the notes of different categories discriminatively in the stacking units.
Since currency notes of 2,000-yen face value are introduced in the year 2001, it is required for the sorter to handle four types of currency notes including the new 2,000-yen notes in addition to the conventional three types of 1,000-yen, 5,000-yen, and 10,000-yen notes.
The revised version of the currency sorter to cope with such a requirement is proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-197509 (Patent Document 2), which have four stacking units for four of the denominations.
Furthermore, the currency design may be sometimes changed, and in such a case, the notes of the old version must be prevented from circulating any longer by collecting the notes of the old version and discriminating between the new and the old to sort out the versions. However, the prior art currency sorter can at most identify the currency notes with the new or old version.
Even with four stacking units for four of the denominations, when the sorter is working to bundle the four types of the currency notes, all of the four stacking units is loaded with the currency notes, and if only one of the stacking units is fully stuffed, a deposit and reception of the notes must be interrupted. The currency notes taken out from the stacking unit immediately before “full” in the stacking unit is detected are to be rejected even if they are fit and authenticated.
Thus, such an interruption degrades an operation efficiency as well as processing efficiency. In addition, till the notes filling the stacking unit are conveyed to undergo the bundling, incoming notes of the same denomination (or the same category) also causes an interruption, and the incoming notes are rejected.
Moreover, the currency notes taken in just before the detection of stacking unit full, which are rejected even if they are fit and authenticated, cause a rejected note stacking unit to contain the really rejected notes and the normal notes together. This necessitates all the notes in the trash unit to undergo the session of process twice, and this significantly degrades the processing efficiency.
The sorters in the prior art can bundle the currency notes discriminatively between the new and old versions but not according to additional categories and conditions, and some of such sorters have to make the notes pass through the same sequence of the processing steps till they are sorted as desired.
Furthermore, some other of the prior art sorters can sort out new and old versions and fit and unfit conditions in combination, but not for two different denominations at the same time. Thus, the sorter has to make the currency notes pass through the same sequence of the processing steps at least twice till they are sorted as desired.
In some real site of the practical use, it is greatly desired that the currency notes that should be withheld and those that are to be released (e.g., fit notes of the new version) should be discriminatively bunched and bundled. This is because, when the currency notes of the new version and those of the old version are stacked together, the notes of the old version and the unfit notes of the new version are to be equally prevented from circulating in the financial market.
Such really desired way of the sorting cannot be attained in the conventional fashion where the currency notes of the same denomination are bunched discriminatively according to the new and old versions and the fit and unfit conditions in combination.